The Women’s Studies Student Association of Cal State Long Beach concentrated on redefining violence against women as a man’s issue rather than primarily a woman’s problem in their workshop, “It Takes a Village to Rape a Woman,” in the first Los Angeles Social Forum at USC on Saturday.
“This workshop was not about what women can do to reduce our risk of being assaulted,” said Marina Wood, a WSSA executive board member at CSULB and speaker at the workshop. “It was about recognizing and understanding the fact that we live in a rape culture where rape and the idea of rape is normalized and supported, and the survivors are largely ignored and disbelieved.”
“We chose not to focus on the victims and survivors of violence because it is only the fault of the perpetrator who decided to attack the victim,” Wood said.
The workshop looked at how the mass media can also reflect and sometimes reinforce gender roles.
The other two speakers, Erin Nakamura and Erin Hale, also CSULB executive board members of WSSA, led an open discussion about the influences media heads, such as Howard Stern and Tom Leykis, can have in dehumanizing women. Both speakers concurred, however, that in order to change the media, we must first change the community.
“[The workshop] caused me to … critically analyze the things women have to go through. It really does take a village to rape a woman,” said Cassie Comley, a CSULB senior human resource management major.
The speakers also touched on myths about rape and rape victims, explaining how the use of phrases such as, “she was asking for it” or “she shouldn’t dress like that if she didn’t want it” are untrue and instead treats the rape victim as a statistic rather than an individual.
Spencer A. Ruiz, a CSULB religious studies major, stated that the workshop was an “exercise exploring the use of language, breaking open prejudices and really seeing how rape culture is promulgated throughout the culture we live in.”
The workshop also delivered the truth that most perpetrators are people the woman often knows, trusts and sometimes loves. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, almost 2/3 of rapes were by someone the victim knew, 38 percent were by a close friend and 28 percent of all rapes happened in an intimate relationship. Relatives of the victims make up 7 percent of rapists.
“While we acknowledge that we as women can make choices that would reduce our risk of assault, we also know that no matter what measures we take we still have a rate of 1 in 6 in regards to being sexually assaulted in our lifetime,” Wood said.
WSSA is an organization re-established by five female students, Marina Wood, Erin Nakamura, Erin Hale, Alaina Chamberlain and Maria Prez, who are devoted to the empowerment of women and committed to the ongoing struggle to eliminate sexism, racism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination in society.
“I think our workshop at the L.A. Social Forum was important because it is basically a crash course in a feminist perspective on men’s violence against women,” Wood said.
Other than this workshop, WSSA, with the help of the Feminist Organization Reclaiming Consciousness and Equality (F.O.R.C.E.), held two feminist film events on campus, supported the Long Beach Pride Parade, and helped host the Take Back the Night at CSULB and UCLA last semester.
This coming fall semester WSSA plans to expedite several film events, a White Ribbon Campaign Day (men working to end men’s violence against women event), a “Get Out Her Vote” campaign and a speak-out via fliers against “Cherry Bust,” a yearly event thrown by the Long Beach Chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity.
This subject has to be addressed more often. The remarks by otherwise sensitive and religious men made in my presence have really hurt over the years
This is a wonderful article! It is so true, I often get angry when I hear “she was asking for it!” Uggh!
Just to clarify, the statistic is 1 in 3.
Great article!